


your love for me has just got to be real

by basketofnovas (slashmarks)



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Genderfuck, Historical Hetalia, M/M, Ottoman Empire, Pining, Politics, Resentment, Trans Character, mentions of other pairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-09 19:28:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17412857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/pseuds/basketofnovas
Summary: The state of Osman sends Herakles to find out what Romania is up to and make him stop that; or, in which everyone is a collaborator and no one is happy about it.





	your love for me has just got to be real

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fic about Greece and Turkey in the context of the Phanariots, men from leading Greek families of Istanbul/Constantinople sent to rule over Romania for the Ottoman Empire. 
> 
> None of the archive warnings apply, but please be warned that this includes characters being nasty about imperial rule and each other's sex lives.
> 
> Title from "NIB" by Black Sabbath.

"I need you to tell me what he's up to," Sadık said, pacing across the room. Herakles had noticed over the years how Sadık hated to sit still and certainly found it unbearable to think that way. Perfectly on form, he had started this conversation seated on the sofa, fidgeting with his book stand; but soon he had risen and gone to the window as though to look out; then he came back over to Herakles, and now he went back and forth without even a pause.

The light through the latticed windows formed a pattern over his skin that whirled as he moved. It was dizzying.

Herakles focused on the conversation again with effort. "That isn't hard," he remarked. "Romania is very predictable. I can tell you what he's doing from right here."

"And what would that be?" Sadık whirled. The robes flared around him as he turned, red silk flashing like rubies in the afternoon sunlight. He formed a very pretty picture, Herakles admitted.

"Plotting sedition and drinking too much alcohol," Herakles said. "It's possible that he's also branched out to coffee, lately. But I wouldn't put money on it." Romania wasn't a fan of Ottoman culture as far as Herakles knew.

Sadık didn't like that. His brows arched, then contracted over his forehead, and he scowled. "I know he's plotting sedition, Herakles," he said. "That's the problem."

"It isn't as if it's a change in the situation," Herakles muttered.

Most likely it was fortunate that Sadık paid no heed to this. "And Hungary," he said. "She still has too many people in the area. Her, too."

"Austria doesn't let Hungary pursue her own business," Herakles said, wearily this time, because he liked Erzsébet better than Mihai. "If she's doing anything it's on his command, and most likely it doesn't involve those of her people who are subjects of the Sultan."

"Then it shouldn't be hard to find out," Sadık said, "Should it?"

Herakles began to see that he was not going to get out of this. Sadık had already made up his mind.

 

"I'll miss you," Mohamed said. "But it's probably just as well. The Eternal State's temper has been short, lately."

He was dressed in the long jacket of a wealthy Muslim woman, transparent shift visible over his chest and in the bell sleeves trailing out from the jacket. He had grown out his hair again, and the short indoor veil over it was gauzy and studded with precious stones. His wrists were delicate under the cloth; his fingers slender on the coffee cup.

Mohamed, Herakles reflected, made a much better woman than he did. And this along with his original status as a Muslim rival state had rated him a legal marriage with a nikah, while Herakles remained a war captive and a slave at least in name.

Mohamed was right; it was just as well that Herakles be sent away from the capital and his erstwhile owner with Sadık in this temper. But he didn't have to like it.

"I'll miss you too, beloved." Herakles sipped his coffee. "I must admit I'm having some difficulty acquiring the necessary bribe money."

"Ah. One moment." Mohamed rose, summoned the servant girl and sent her off again.

Herakles watched her with a critical eye. "She was sloppy with the coffee, earlier."

"She's more interested in the education part than the serving," Mohamed said calmly. "I'll be training a new one soon, she's received her first marriage offers -- ah, here." He took the small casket she'd returned with; passed it to Herakles. "This should cover your bribe money nicely. A gift from Sadık last time he wanted back into my bed."

Legal wives, Herakles thought dryly, also had the right to their own households, with locking doors.

He took the casket home wrapped in a shawl, and opened it when Sadık was distracted; sifted slowly through the gold bracelets, the jeweled earrings. Mohamed was too kind, and Sadık _really_ couldn't keep it in his pants. This would do nicely.

 

The prince Sadık had sent him to accompany was essentially the same as the rest: Greek, wealthy and up to the tip of his nose in debt. He would have the right to tax the Romanian population toward actually repaying some of it in exchange for his loyalty to the sultan and his ensuring the Romanians pretended to possess that loyalty, too.

Herakles had not survived hundreds of years of Byzantine court procedures for nothing. He said the right things at the right times, wore the right clothing, made the right obeisance, and passed over Mohamed's jewels (and some of his own funding in coins, courtesy Sadık) in the right ways. After - going on two thousand years, soon, it was all fairly menial to him. The prince might have at least had an interest in philosophy or mathematics or something to make befriending him more stimulating but no, it was all partying and nubile women with this one.

Herakles had to admit that nubile women were not and had never been one of his interests. It was insulting that he kept thinking about Sadık instead. He went back to his apartment in the provincial palace and wrote letters: to Mohamed telling him about the prince, to Erzsébet asking after her husband, to Serbia asking after Romania's current taste in alcohol and rebellious literature. 

He didn't write to Sadık. Once he was in this mood there was no good in it, not until Herakles could give him what he wanted. He shouldn't even _want_ to write to Sadık, he thought savagely. He sealed his letters and went to bed. 

Once there, he tried very hard to concentrate on the thought of his hands on Mohamed's slender wrists, or of Serbia fucking him outside, with the dead winter wheat stalks digging into his back. He still had Sadık's eyes and his teeth on his neck in mind, despite himself, when he came.

"He sent you away," he muttered into the pillows, angrily. "He sent you to _Romania_. Get over him, idiot." 

This didn't appreciatively help.

 

In the morning he was still in a foul mood. He dressed in his most expensive and illegal garments - Sadık was not one to take notice of the Sultan telling him he couldn't dress his Christian servants how he pleased - and went out into the city, boots impacting satisfyingly off the dirt roads. He could feel Romania if he tried, if he was nearby; and the Ottoman had vested power over his province in him by sending him here, which helped. He just had to concentrate on the feel of him, let himself lose track of his own exact location in time and space, and--

There he was.

He found Romania in a coffee house after all, crouched on a ratty cushion and passionately debating the merits of armed revolt with what looked like a bunch of unemployed mercenaries. Herakles scowled and strode into the room, not taking care of the people around him.

This wasn't the kind of place where wealthy men often came; and Herakles' clothes screamed _employ of the sultan_. Some of them might have mugged him if they met him on the street, but a coffee house was an awkwardly public place, and Herakles wasn't behaving as though he felt fear. 

"Shit," Romania said, staring at him in what might have been appreciation or fear or disdain. "Someone rose in the world."

"Come with me," Herakles said, grimly. "We have some talking to do."

Romania glanced at his friends, one time to each side. Then he rose and he went.

The following conversation was not what Herakles would describe as enlightening, featuring such exchanges as:

"Osmanli believes you're conspiring against the sultan."

"Who the fuck isn't? I'm not gonna do anything after you fucking abolished my monarchy, I'm not an idiot."

What was more useful - at least for Sadık's purposes - was Herakles' success in dragging Romania with him to the Phanariot prince's court.

"I should be with my people," Romania muttered, angrily closing the expensive new jacket Herakles had bought him,

"Causing trouble, you mean?" Herakles said, and pushed down the thought that he was quoting Sadık as he did it. (He hadn't been so heavy handed with the Byzantine provinces. That was always his mother's job.)

"What the fuck is the matter with you?" Romania hissed. "I forgot what a dick you were after Sophia left you. Is that what's wrong? Osmanli threw you out of his bed?"

Herakles bit the insides of his cheeks to stop himself from snarling back. Point to Mihai, he thought after a moment, when the first flush of anger was down. "You'd better get your tone under control before you meet your prince," he said.

"You mean _your_ prince."

"I'd also suggest you speak Turkish," Herakles said, and left the room. He was satisfied to hear Romania scrambling to catch up behind him.

Verbally abusing Romania, Herakles had to admit, wasn't going to keep him at his court and Sadık satisfied. The amenities might. Romania liked women better than Herakles did, and was also considerably fond of alcohol (with or without blood mixed in, depending on the rumors.)

Just to be sure, once he had presented Mihai Ionescue to the prince, Herakles went off to talk to the military commander too. With the aid of the most impressive of Mohamed's jewels, he ensured that Romania would be retrieved if he wandered off again.

This proved helpful in less than a week.

Serbia's reply had come by then, helped along by the same manipulation of space Herakles had used to find Romania. That was interesting: it implied Sadık and Miroslav were speaking again, if he was allowing Serbia freedom of movement. Herakles read it quickly, frowned, and went off to buy a bottle of țuică from the locals.

Then he went to see Romania, currently resident in the local jail.

"Fuck you," Romania said.

"That's not very polite," Herakles said, and set down the bottle.

Of course, Romania couldn't reach for it. He glared. "Poisoned?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Herakles said.

"I know what you did to the princes you didn't like."

"You're hardly a prince or a mortal. And you're currently chained to the wall," Herakles pointed out. "If I wanted to have you killed, I'd tell Mustafa Agha to have the new recruits use you for target practice."

"I'm not going to cooperate for a bottle of moonshine."

"No, you're going to cooperate because you want to stay in Romania," Herakles said. "Alternatively, the empire can always use another galley slave in the navy. If you'd rather that, you're free to drink it before I send you."

There was a long silence.

"He must be amazing in bed," Romania said.

"I'll hear your final answer tomorrow." Herakles swept off. He left the bottle and didn't unchain Romania's hands.

 

Tomorrow, Serbia showed up.

Unlike Romania's drinking companions, his clothing, manner and weaponry declared him an _employed_ mercenary, which did not explain why he was in Wallachia in general or Herakles' apartment in particular. "So, uh, Greece," he said, rubbing the back of his head under the cap.

"Herakles, please," Herakles said. He liked Mirko, most of the time.

"Right, so, I talked to Mihai."

"You think I'm being overly strict."

"I think you're usually a little subtler than going straight to galley slavery as a threat," Mirko said. He drummed his fingers on the table. "Look, what's it really hurt anyone if he wants to sit in a coffee shop all day and bitch about the sultan with the rest of the block? Someone's saying it in every damn coffee shop in Rumeli. And you and I both know he isn't going to do anything _useful_ until his monarchy's reinstated."

"You'll have to take it up with Osmanli," Herakles said. "He's the one who sent me." He didn't have a good argument, since Mirko was right.

"Ah," Mirko said, and didn't actually say _so Mihai was right_ , so Herakles didn't have to have him arrested, too.

 

Romania held out for almost a week. Within two days of giving up, he had a favorite of the prince's concubines and had invited Herakles to drink the țuică with him. "Tell Osmanli to enjoy the tight ass," he said, sniggering, and Herakles gritted his teeth and told him to shut up and keep his mind on his own lover.

He received Erzsébet's letter and reports on her whereabouts from the relevant spies within the month, and he took the long way back to Constantinople to compose them into his own answer to Sadık. There was no need to look too eager to be back.

 

**Author's Note:**

> While various historical revisionists tend to discuss the Ottoman Empire as a homogenuously Turkish and/or Muslim empire, it was extremely diverse and members of various groups had stakes in the ruling class. Discussed here are the Greek [Phanariot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phanariotes) governors of Romania. I'm not actually certain of the language use of Phanariots - most likely it would depend on individual governors- but many Istanbul Greeks were exclusively Turkish-speaking.
> 
> It may also help understanding to know that mercenaries, including Christians, were employed in the service of the empire (and sometimes subequently unemployed to the _dis_ service to the empire and its inhabitants).
> 
> Slavery was widespread among the Ottoman upper classes, and slaves could sometimes obtain great personal status and political power, although I am not one to argue that this made Ottoman slavery benign. Sexual relationships between men and younger men or slaves were apparently fairly common, if not generally approved of by religious authorities.
> 
> Sumptuary law restricting the clothing choices of various sectors of the population was often passed and subsequently widely ignored.
> 
> Sources I found particularly useful for this work include "Sociosexual Roles in Ottoman Pulp Fiction" (Sayers), _Süleyman the Magnificent and His Age: The Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World_ (eds. Woodhead and Kunt), _Subjects of the Sultan: Culture and Daily Life in the Ottoman Empire_ (Faroqhi) and _Women's Costume of the Near and Middle East_ (Scarce).


End file.
